Prime Minister Boris Johnson won approval for his Brexit deal in parliament yesterday, the first step towards fulfilling his election pledge to deliver Britain’s departure from the European Union by Jan 31 after his landslide victory.

Iraq’s influential top Shia cleric Grand Ayatollah Ali Sistani yesterday called for early elections to end the political paralysis in the protest-hit country.

An earthquake shook some buildings in Pakistan, Afghanistan and Kashmir state in India yesterday, witnesses said.

Clashes between Syrian regime forces and armed groups in the country’s last major opposition bastion have killed more than 60 on both sides in the past 24 hours despite UN calls for de-escalation, a war monitoring group said yesterday.

A court sentenced a former lawmaker from India’s ruling party to life imprisonment for raping a teenager, his lawyer said yesterday, the highest ranking Indian politician to get such a significant jail term in recent years.

Belgian prosecutors yesterday urged a court to impose a 30-year jail term on a former Rwandan official convicted of genocide for his part in his country’s 1994 massacres.

A woman who alleges disgraced Hollywood mogul Harvey Weinstein sexually assaulted her when she was 16 filed suit against him on Thursday and rejected a settlement reached by other accusers.

Australian Prime Minister Scott Morrison issued a rare public apology yesterday and cut short a Hawaiian vacation in response to mounting public anger after two volunteer firefighters were killed battling bushfires sweeping the country’s east coast.

Beijing yesterday accused the European Parliament of hypocrisy, after a resolution called for targeted sanctions against Chinese officials over the treatment of the Uighur minority.

US President Donald Trump presses his Republican allies to exert rigid control of his Senate trial and ensure a swift exoneration, a day after he was impeached in a historic rebuke by the House of Representatives.

Facebook says it is investigating a report that a database containing names and phone numbers of more than 267 million users was exposed online.

Democratic candidates on the 2020 presidential debate stage quickly attacks Donald Trump one day after his impeachment, saying he is a corrupt president who deserves to be ousted.

The UN hailed Wednesday a “decisive shift” in the approach to helping surging numbers of displaced people, after a summit ended with

Israeli warplanes attacked an arms plant in the Hamas-controlled Gaza Strip early yesterday, after Palestinian militants in the enclave

Russian President Vladimir Putin yesterday said “nobody knows” what causes climate change, seeming to cast doubt over whether global

A state of emergency was declared in Australia’s most populated region yesterday as an unprecedented heatwave fanned out-of-control bushfires, destroying homes and smothering huge areas with a toxic smoke.

A top Chinese university has removed references to “freedom of thought” from its charter, triggering a rare act of student defiance, while two other institutions added language stressing fealty to President Xi Jinping and the Communist Party.

Prime Minister Boris Johnson yesterday put Britain’s departure from the EU at the top of the agenda, as Queen Elizabeth II read out his plans for government in a parliamentary ceremony following a sweeping election win.

Three small explosions went off in a southern Rakhine town in Myanmar yesterday just before civilian leader Aung San Suu Kyi landed there in a rare visit to the conflict-ridden state, a local official said.

A Philippine court yesterday found the bosses of an influential political clan guilty of masterminding a 2009 massacre of 57 people, a ruling cheered as a partial victory for justice and a challenge to the country’s notorious culture of impunity.